Copyright and Takedown Policy

Our role is hosting, not publishing. Nobody here picks, vets or edits what a customer puts on their own site, and we carry no general obligation to go hunting for problems. One duty does bind us: to act when a person points at something specific. Telling us is what this page is for.

1. Sending a notice

Email info@hosting-n-domains.com putting "Copyright notice" in the subject line, or go through abuse reports. Before we can act on a notice it has to carry every item below. Anything short of that gets returned to you instead of being worked on:

• the work you own, described closely enough that we can recognise it, and best of all a link to where it sits published legitimately;
• the exact URL, or the URLs, where the infringing material sits. A home page will not do, and neither will a whole domain;
• your name, your postal address, your email address, and the person you act for if that applies;
• a statement saying you hold a good faith belief that neither the rights holder, nor an agent, nor the law authorised this use;
• a statement confirming the information is accurate, and that you either hold the rights yourself or have authority to act for whoever does.

A notice under the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act reaches us at the same address, in the same form, and gets handled on exactly the terms any other notice gets. This company trades out of Canada and carries no obligation to apply US law. Even so, a complete DMCA notice already holds everything listed above, so we will act on it.

2. How we handle a notice

When a notice arrives complete, we put its substance to the account holder, usually inside one working day. Your name travels with it, as does what the notice says, since nobody can answer a case they have not been shown. The postal address you gave stays with us, unless you ask us to pass it on or a court orders it.

Where infringement is plain on its face and the account holder stays silent for five working days, we disable access to the material. Where the position is genuinely arguable, we say as much and leave the two of you to settle it between yourselves. This is not a tribunal. A hosting company ruling on contested ownership from the evidence of a single email would serve nobody at all.

3. Answering a notice

Had your material disabled and think the call was wrong? Write back with your reason: a licence, a purchase, permission given in writing, or an argument for fair dealing. Send that to the same address, and put in a statement that you believe, in good faith, the material came down in error.

Where a counter-notice reads as credible, its substance travels back to the complainant. Unless that person tells us inside a further ten working days that a court claim is being issued, access usually comes back on.

4. Repeat infringement

An account that keeps drawing substantiated notices is terminated. No fixed count triggers that: three notices about a single disputed image sits nowhere near three notices about three wholesale copies of somebody's catalogue. We weigh it on that footing, and we explain what we decided.

5. Bad faith takedown requests

Filing a takedown notice is a serious statement to make. Abuse one to gag a competitor or to win a row and you may attract liability yourself. Every notice we receive is kept on file, and where one sender builds a pattern of unfounded complaints, that alone is reason to stop acting on them without independent evidence.

6. Trade marks, and complaints that are not about copyright

Trade mark complaints travel the same route, though you send the registration number and the territory rather than the work itself. Defamation, privacy and other non-IP complaints arrive through abuse reports, though a host has to clear a higher bar before pulling down content that looks lawful on its face. A court order is usually what shifts it.

7. Our own material

Text, layout, photography and the mark on this website are owned by Azaanex Inc. unless a credit says otherwise. Quote us and attribute it; republishing whole pages is another matter. Photography carries a licence to us, and no quotation takes it along.

8. Who this is with

Hosting & Domains is a trading name of Azaanex Inc., a company registered in Canada under Company No. 1766541-5. Registered office: 5-145 1/2 Church St, Toronto, Ontario M5B 1Y4, Canada. Notices go to info@hosting-n-domains.com.